ITALY AND HER INVADERS.

BOOK V .

THE IMPERIAL RESTORATION 535—553

CHAPTER V.

THE LONG SIEGE BEGUN

 

Vacillation and feebleness of purpose marked the counsels of Witigis, as the consequences of the fatal error which he had committed in abandoning Rome made themselves manifest to his mind. At first his chief desire was to wait till his forces should be strengthened by the return of Marcias with the considerable army which he had under his command for the defence of Gothic Gaul against the Franks. Then came tidings which showed that Belisarius felt his hold of Rome so secure that he might venture onwards into the Tuscan province. Bessas was sent to Narni, about fifty miles from Rome, the first strong position on the Flaminian Way. The inhabitants being well affected to the imperial cause, he occupied this post without difficulty. Constantine, the rival of Bessas in martial glory, was sent with some of the body guards of Belisarius, and other troops, among whom figured several Huns, in order to seize some positions yet further from the city. Spoleto, twenty-five miles further from Rome on the Flaminian Way, was occupied by a garrison. Etrurian Perugia on her lofty hill-top, some forty miles further north than Spoleto, but lying a little off the great Flaminian highway, was next taken possession of, and here Constantine fixed his headquarters. The troops which Witigis dispatched against Perugia were defeated, and their generals were sent as prisoners to Rome.

The tidings of these reverses roused Witigis to more vigorous action; but, strangely enough, after tarrying so long in order to be joined by the recalled troops from Gaul, he must now weaken himself still further by sending a division into Dalmatia. It is true that of the two generals dispatched on this errand, one, Asinarius, was sent round the head of the Adriatic Gulf, to gather round his standard the barbarians who dwelt in the districts which we now call Carniola and Croatia. But the other, Uligisal, who sailed straight to Dalmatia, must have taken with him some troops who could be ill-spared from the defence of Italy. It is not necessary to trouble the reader with the details of these ill-advised, and in the end resultless, operations on the east of the Adriatic. The Goths met with reverses, but succeeded for some time in closely investing Salona both by sea and land. he Dalmatian capital, however, fell not; and after a siege of uncertain duration, the Gothic soldiers probably recrossed the Adriatic to take part in the more urgent work of resisting Belisarius in Italy.

About this time word was brought to the Gothic King that the citizens of Rome viewed with impatience the presence and the exactions of the imperial army. That there was some foundation of truth for this statement will appear by a reference to the last chapter; but it was evidently much exaggerated, and it by no means followed that the citizens who grumbled the most bitterly at the general's preparations for the siege would lift a finger for the surrender of the city to the justly enraged Gothic army. However, the tidings kindled immediately a flame of hope in the feebly forecasting soul of Witigis: and now he, who had wasted precious months in purposeless inaction, thought every day an age till he had recovered possession of the abandoned city. With the whole armed nation of the Goths, (except the division that had been ordered to Dalmatia) he marched southwards in hot haste along the Flaminian Way. The numbers of his army amounted, if we trust the estimate of Procopius, to 150,000 men. The historian evidently uses round numbers, and has probably exaggerated the size of the besieging host in order to increase the fame of Belisarius; but there can be no doubt that Witigis was followed by a very large army, outnumbering many times over the little band of the Imperialists. The proportions of infantry and cavalry are not stated, but we are told that the greater number, both of the horses and men, were completely encased in defensive armour.

Once started on his march, Witigis was tormented by a fond fear that Belisarius would escape him, and was earnest in his prayers by night and by day that he might behold the walls of Rome while yet the Imperial forces stood behind them. On the journey the army fell in with a priest who had just quitted the city, and who was brought with shouts to the King's tent. “Is Belisarius yet in Rome?” asked Witigis, breathless with anxiety. “Ay, and likely to remain there”, was the answer of the priest, who had a better idea of the state of the game than his questioner.

Still, the Imperial general was for a moment perplexed by the tidings that so vast a host was rolling on towards him. It was not for his own position that he was in fear, but he felt that he could scarcely hold the latest conquests in Tuscany in the face of such an army. After some anxious deliberation he ordered Constantine and Bessas to garrison three towns only, and then to fall back on Borne. The three towns were Spoleto, Perugia, and Narni, all situated on the top of high hills, and therefore easily defended. Narni especially, built on

“that grey crag where girt with towers

The fortress of Nequinum lowers

O'er the pale waves of Nar”,

and commanding the entrance to a deep and picturesque gorge spanned by the stately bridge of Augustus (one of whose arches still remains), struck the mind of the historian by the grand inaccessibility of its position. Bessas, who lingered somewhat over the execution of the orders of his chief, had the excitement of a successful skirmish with the vanguard of the Gothic army before he retired from this fortress to Rome.

Notwithstanding the fact that these strongholds were in the possession of the enemy, Witigis appears to have pushed on by the Flaminian Way which winds at their feet; and was soon standing with his 150,000 men at the Etrurian end of the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber, two miles from Rome. This bridge, so well-known under its modern name of Ponte Molle to the fashionable loungers in Rome, is in its present shape the handiwork of Papal architects; but the foundations of the piers are ancient, and the general appearance of the six arches with which it spans the stream is not probably very different from that which it wore in the days of Belisarius. A bridge whose name had often been in the mouths of the Roman people in stirring times, in the crises of Punic wars and Catilinarian conspiracies, it had earned yet greater fame two centuries ago (A.D. 312) by the bloody battle fought under its parapets between the soldiers of Constantine and those of Maxentius, a battle the result of which ensured the triumph of Christianity through the whole Roman world, and which has been for this reason commemorated by Raffaele and Romano with splendid strength in the Stanze of the Vatican.

Expecting that the Goths would attempt to cross the river here, and anxious to retard their progress, though without hope of finally preventing them from reaching the eastern bank of the river, Belisarius had erected a fortress on the Etrurian bank, and decided to pitch his camp close to the stream on the Latian side, in order to overawe the barbarians by this show of confidence. And, indeed, the ardour of the Goths was not a little chilled when they saw the castle above, and the tawny river before them. They bivouacked between Monte Mario and the Tiber for the night, postponing till the morrow the assault on the bridge-fort. The night, however, brought gloomy forebodings to other hearts than theirs. It seemed to the garrison impossible that the bridge could be effectually defended against that vast horde of men whose camp-fires filled the plain. Twenty-two soldiers of the Roman army, themselves of barbarian origin, horsemen in the troop of Innocentius, went over to the foes and informed them of the state of discouragement which prevailed in the garrison. As night wore on, the rest of the men on duty in the bridge-fort deserted their post. They did not dare to show themselves in Rome, but slunk away to Campania. When day dawned the Goths marched without difficulty through the empty guard-house, across the undefended bridge, and now they stood on the eastern bank of the Tiber with no natural obstacle between them and Rome.

Little dreaming of the cowardice of the garrison, Belisarius, who thought the barbarians were still on the other side of the river, sent 1000 picked horsemen to the bridge-end to reconnoiter for a suitable camping-ground. They fell in with a party of the Gothic horsemen who had just crossed the bridge, and an equestrian battle followed. Then, says the historian, Belisarius forgot for a moment the discretion which ought to be manifested by a general, and by exposing himself like a common soldier brought the Imperial cause into the extremest peril. Springing upon his charger he hurried to the place whence the clash of arms was heard, and was soon in the thickest of the fight. His horse, a noble creature, which did everything that a horse could do to carry its rider harmless through the fray, was well known to all the army. Darkroan, with a white star upon its forehead, it was called by the Greeks Phalius, and by the barbarians in the army Balan. The deserters knew the steed and his rider, and strove to direct the weapons of the Goths against them. “Balan! Balan! Aim for the horse with the white star” was their eager exclamation. The cry was caught up by the Goths, scarce one of whom understood its meaning. But they knew that the horse with the white star must carry some personage of importance: and “Balan! Balan!” resounded from a thousand Gothic throats through the confused roar of the battle. All their bravest thronged to the place, some with lances, some with swords, striving to transfix or to hew down the horse and his rider. To right, to left, Belisarius dealt his swashing blows. The best men of his bodyguard gathered round him, some protecting his body and that of his horse with their shields, others thrusting back the onset of the barbarians by impetuous counter-charges. It was a true Homeric battle, in which all that was most martial in the two armies was drawn to a single point, and on one group of fighting men rested the whole fortune of the day. At length Roman arms and Roman discipline prevailed. After a thousand Gothic warriors of the foremost rank and many of the bravest men of the Roman general's household had fallen, the barbarians fled to their camp, and Belisarius emerged absolutely unwounded from the fray.

When the fugitives reached the Gothic camp their comrades poured out in support of them. The Romans retreated to a hill near at hand, and here again a battle of cavalry took place, in which the deeds of greatest daring were wrought by a certain Valentine, who served in the humble capacity of groom to the son-in-law of Belisarius. Alone the brave menial charged an advancing squadron of the Goths, and rescued his comrades from imminent peril. The advance of the barbarians was, however, too strong to be resisted, and at length the whole Roman army, with Belisarius at their head, were in full flight to the walls of the city. They reached the Pincian Gate, which, from that memorable day, was long afterwards known by the name of the Gate of Belisarius. Down the sides of the fosse swarmed the crowd of fugitives, but only to find to their despair the folding doors of the Porta Pinciana obstinately closed against them. The hoars voice of Belisarius was heard, loudly and with dosed threats calling to the sentinels to open the gate, but in vain. In that face, all covered with sweat, and dust and gore, they did not recognize, now that twilight was coming on, the countenance of the general whom they had so often seen serene in his hours of triumph: his voice they could not distinguish through the din of the refluent tide of war. Above all, the terrible rumour had reached their ears, brought by the first fugitives from the field, that Belisarius, after performing prodigies of valour, had been left dead upon the plain. This thought most of all unnerved them. They were left, it seemed, without a general and without a plan, and as they stooped forward from the round towers by the gate, to see by the fading light how went the fortune of the fight, they felt themselves to be doomed men whose only chance of safety lay in keeping fast the doors by which, if opened, Goth and Roman would enter together.

This was the state of affairs, the Roman soldiers huddled together under the wall, so close to one the another that they could hardly move, their comrades above refusing to open the gates, the Goths just preparing to rush down the fosse and make an exterminating charge, when the lost battle was retrieved by the wise rashness of Belisarius. Collecting his men into a small but orderly army he faced round and made a vigorous charge upon the pursuing Goths. Already thrown into disorder by the ardour of their pursuit, unable by the fading light to discern the small number of their foes, and naturally concluding that a new army was issuing from the gates of Rome to attack them, the barbarians turned and fled. Belisarius wisely pursued them but a short distance, reformed his ranks, and marched back in good order to the gate, where he had now no difficulty in obtaining an entrance. Thus did the battle, which had commenced at dawn and lasted till dark, end after all not disastrously for the Imperial troops. By universal consent the praise of highest daring on that day was awarded to two men, to Belisarius on the side of the Romans, and on that of the barbarians to a standard-bearer named Visandus. The latter was conspicuous in the thickest of the fight round Belisarius and the dark-roan steed, and it was not till he had received his thirteenth wound that he ceased from the combat. His victorious comrades saw and passed on from what they deemed to be the corpse of their champion; but three days after, when they came at their leisure to bury their dead, a soldier thought saw signs of life in the body of Visandus and implored him to speak. Hunger and a raging thirst prevented him from doing more than make one gasping request for water. When that was brought him consciousness fully returned, and he was able to be carried into the camp. He lived after this many years, having achieved great glory among his countrymen by his prowess and his narrow escape from death.

For Belisarius, not even yet were the labours and anxieties of this long day ended. He mustered the soldiers and the greater part of the citizens upon the walls, and ordered them to kindle frequent fires along their circuit and to watch the whole night through. Then he went round the walls himself, arranging who was to be responsible for the defence of each portion, and especially which generals were to be on guard at each of the gates. While he was thus engaged, a messenger came in breathless haste from the Praenestine Gate at the south-east of the city to say that Bessas, who was commanding there, had learned that the enemy were pouring in by the Gate of St Pancratius on the other side of the Tiber. Hearing this, the officers round him besought him to save himself and the army by marching out at some other gate. Unshaken by these disastrous tidings, Belisarius calmly said that he did not believe the report. A horseman, dispatched with all speed to the Trastevere, returned with the welcome news that the enemy had not been seen in that part of the city. Belisarius improved the opportunity by issuing a general order that under no circumstances, not even if he heard that the Goths were inside the walls, was the officer entrusted with the defence of one gate to leave it in order to carry assistance to another. Each one was to attend to his own allotted portion of work and leave the care of the general defence to the commander-in-chief.

The earnest work of the defence was interrupted by the comedy of a harangue from a Gothic chief named Wacis, who, by order of Witigis, drew near to the walls. With much vehemence he inveighed against the faithlessness of the Romans, who had betrayed their brave Gothic defenders and handed themselves over, instead, to the guardianship of a company of Greeks, men who had hitherto never been heard of in Italy except as play-actors, mimics, or vagabond sailors. Belisarius bade the men on the walls to treat this tirade with silent contempt: and in truth, after the deeds of that day, to revive the taunts which had passed current for centuries against Grecian effeminacy was an impertinence which refuted itself. None the less, however, did the Roman citizens marvel at and secretly condemn the calm confidence of success, the absolute contempt for his foe which was displayed on this occasion by Belisarius, so lately a fugitive from the Gothic sword. He understood the rules of the game, however, better than they, and having repaired the error of the morning, knew that no second opportunity of the same kind would be afforded by him to the enemy.

And now, at last, when the night was already far advanced, was the general, who had fasted from early morning, prevailed on by his wife and friends to take some care for the refreshment of his body, hastily snatching a simple meal.

This memorable day was the beginning of the First Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths, the longest and one of the deadliest that the Eternal City has ever endured. It began in the early days of March 537, and was not to end till a year and nine days later in the March of 538. When morning dawned, the Goths, who entertained no doubt of an early success against so large and helpless a city, proceeded to entrench themselves in seven camps, six on the eastern and one on the western side of the Tiber. They did not thus accomplish a perfect blockade of the city, but they did obstruct, in a tolerably effectual manner, eight out of its fourteen gates. As frequent reference in the course of this history will be made to one or other of these gates, it will be well to give a list of them here, with their ancient and modern names, printing those that were obstructed by the Goths in italics.

 

Ancient Name.	Modern Name.	No. of Towers.
East bank of the Tiber :
1. Porta Flaminia	P. del Popolo	51
2. Porta Solaria	P. Salara.	10
3. Porta Nomentana near to	P. Pia.	57
4. Porta Tiburtina	P. San Lorenzo.	19
5. Porta Labicana
6. Porta Praenestina	P. Maggiore	26
7. Porta Asinaria near to	P. San Giovanni	20
8. Porta Metrovia(or Metronia)	Closed	20
9. Porta Latina	Closed.	12
10. Porta Appia	P. San Sebastiano.	49
11. Porta Ostiensis	P. San Paolo.	35 to the Tiber.
West bank of the Tiber:
12. Porta Portuensis, near to	P. Portese	29.
13. Porta Aurelta1 (or SanctimPancrati)	P. SanPancrazio	24 to the Tiber
14. Porta Cornelia (or Sancti Petri	Destroyed (opposite Ponte S. Angelo).	16

To give some idea of the distance of one gate from another the number of square towers between each pair of gates is added on the authority of the Pilgrim of Einsiedeln. The intervals between the towers varied from 100 to 300 and even 400 feet, the wider spaces being chiefly found on the west side of the Tiber.

Between the Flaminian and the Salarian gates stood the somewhat smaller Porta Pinciana, now closed, which was the scene of some hot encounters during the siege. It is possible that Procopius may have reckoned the Porta Pinciana as one of the fourteen gates belonging to the whole circuit of the walls, and one of the six gates on the eastern side of the Tiber that were blocked by the enemy. In that case we must treat the Labicana and Praenestina as one gate, which their close proximity to one another justifies us in doing. It seems more probable, however, that Procopius, who is generally very careful to denote the Pincian by the term gatelet, and who informs us that there were fourteen gates “besides certain gate-lets” did not mean to reckon the Pincian among the great gates of Rome.

The total circuit of the walls of Aurelian and Honorius was about twelve miles. The space blockaded by the Goths amounted probably to tent of the about two-thirds of this circumference. The camps of the barbarians were works of some solidity. Deep fosses were dug around them: the earth dug out of the fosse was piled on its inner face so as to make a high rampart, and a fence of sharp stakes was inserted therein. Altogether, as Procopius says, these Gothic camps lacked none of the defenses of a regular castle. A careful observer (Mr. Parker), who has had the advantage of several years' residence in Rome, considers that the traces of all these camps are still visible. Without venturing to pronounce an opinion on a question requiring such minute local knowledge, it will not be amiss to place before the reader the result of his investigations. In any event the Gothic camps must have been near the sites which he has assigned to them.

The first camp was placed within a stone's throw of the Porta Flaminia (to the north-east), in the grounds which formerly belonged to the villa of the Domitii. This camp was obviously required in order to obstruct the great northern road of Rome and to threaten the gate leading to it.

The second, probably the largest and most important of all, was erected in what are now the gardens of the Villa Borghese. The woods and shady coverts of this, which is one of the most beautiful of the parks surrounding the walls of Rome, make it now very difficult to get a clear view of the ground and to reconstruct in imagination the scene of so many terrible encounters. Still it is possible to behold the quickly-rising ground on which the camp was placed. The raised platform for the tents to stand upon (one of these tents was probably the royal pavilion of Witigis) and the cliffs around it are (says Mr. Parker) very visible. Clearly seen from it were doubtless the high walls of the city, the Pincian gate-let, and the Pincian gardens surrounding the palace in which Belisarius dwelt.

The third camp, concealed from view by modern walls, says Parker, lay on the left hand of the Via Nomentana, about half-way (or rather less) to the ancient church of St. Agnes outside the walls.

Rounding the sharp projecting angle of the Castra Praetoria we come to two camps, fourth and fifth, one on the north and one on the south of the Via Tiburtina. The fifth, says Parker, is very near to the great church and burial-ground of St. Laurence outside the walls, from which the cliffs of it are distinctly seen. The fourth is apparently placed by him only about a couple of hundred yards away near the Villa Santo Spirito. It may perhaps be doubted whether Parker is right in putting these two camps so near to one another.

The sixth, and last on this side of the river, is placed about half-a-mile from the south­eastern corner of the walls along the Via Praenestina.

On the other side of the Tiber the Goths built a camp to assure their hold upon the Milvian Bridge and to threaten the gates of St. Peter and St. Pancratius. We are told that it was in the Campus Neronis. It must have been therefore not far from where the Vatican palace now stands: but after the vast changes which the Popes, from the fifteenth century onwards, have made in that region, it would be futile now to look for its remains. Marcias, who had by this time arrived with the troops from Gaul, took the command of this trans-Tiberine camp. A Gothic officer was placed in charge of each of the other camps, Witigis having a general over­sight of all on the east of the Tiber and the particular oversight of one, which, as has been before said, was probably that in the Borghese gardens.

On the Roman side Belisarius himself took the command of the portion of the wall between the Pincian gate-let and the Salarian gate; the part which was considered least secure, and where the Roman opportunities for a sally were the most inviting. The Praenestine Gate

(Maggiore) was assigned to Bessas, the Flaminia (P. del Popolo) to Constantine. The last- named gate was blocked up with large stones (perhaps taken from the old wall of King Servius), so that it might not be possible for traitors to open it to the enemy. For, on account of the close proximity of the first Gothic camp, a surprise at this gate was considered more probable than at any other.

The building of the seven camps of the barbarians was a temporary expedient, and when the war was over the traces of them, except for the eye of an archaeologist, soon passed away. Not so, however, with the next operation resorted to by the Goths, which may be said to have influenced the social life of Rome, and through Rome the social life of the kingdoms of Western Europe, throughout the ten centuries which we call the Middle Ages. This operation was the cutting of the Aqueducts. A deed of such far-reaching importance requires to be treated of in a chapter by itself; nor will the reader possibly object to turn for a little space from the tale of barbarous battle to the story of the wise forethought of the Romans of ancient days the builders of the mighty water-courses which fed the Eternal City.